For various economic and business reasons enterprises are increasingly centralizing their backend computer systems in purpose built data centers. Data centers typically house high concentrations and densities of such computer systems and additionally provide facilities such as uninterruptible power supplies and cooling systems necessary for the operation of the computer systems in the data center.
Different data centers are typically unique in their requirements and capacity, since the requirements of data centre customers are highly individual. Accordingly, the cooling requirements of data centers are also highly individual and must be carefully designed to provide an appropriate amount of cooling for their associated data center.
However, designing and building custom cooling facilities is a complex, time-consuming and expensive task. Furthermore, as data center requirements change over time, for example through the addition of extra computing capacity, corresponding changes may be required to the cooling facilities.